About This Class

Line drawing is an easy art form featuring illustrative, doodle-like designs. It's used widely among artists of many types with both fine lines and bold lines. In this class, you will be introduced to techniques that will assist you in creating beautiful flowers and leaves.

You will learn that you can create many styles from the same object depending on the mood you want it to reflect (e.g. simple, textured, intricate, ornate, etc.).

This class walks through drawing the following:

Ferns

Branches

Leaves

Flowers of many kinds

Wreaths

Laurels

Cacti

Succulents

You will work off of lines and shapes, photographs, pressed flowers and live flowers and leaves!

For more DIY projects, lettering and drawing tutorials, and resources of all kinds, visit my channel, my website and my Instagram.

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Class Outline

The art of the botanical drawing. Peggy will teach you to create botanical art by line drawing wildflowers, leaves, and other natural objects. In this class, you’ll learn design in an entirely new way – whether your end goal is to create tangible artworks or vectorial illustration, Peggy’s easy techniques will help you draw new and interesting motifs that will make your pieces pop.

Creating your own. You’ll be invited to create your own paper and ink botanical drawing and then translate it onto a box, a piece of wood, or another non-paper material. Peggy will encourage you to upload your progress on the project page to get her feedback as you work, and to post your final design at the end of your endeavor for valuable community criticism.

Tools and materials. Peggy will talk you through all of the tools that you need to begin your foray into botanical illustration. To start, all you’ll need to gather is some crisp paper and a range of pens with points that allow you to draw different line weights. Peggy will suggest different brands and types of materials that she relies on, and discuss the ways that she avoids common challenges, like ink bleeds and fading.

Creating flowers. You will learn how to create stylized versions of a wide range of flowers, from tulips to daisies and wildflowers, by using basic, easily-mastered lines. With step-by-step instructions, Peggy will show you how a few simple strokes can be transformed into a believable plant, and will share her tricks for creating visual character, depth, and detail.

Creating leaves. Peggy will discuss how to draw greenery by relying on symmetry and shape. She will show you multiple ways to draw common leaves by working from the inside out, and vice versa, to depict organic-looking forms. You’ll also learn her proven techniques for drawing leafy stems, and how she incorporates them into more complex botanical scenes. With Peggy’s help, you’ll be drawing entire meadows in no time!

Drawing wreaths. You’ll see how Peggy builds on her simple drawing methods to create elaborate and polished wreaths of laurel, flowers, and leaves. When her wreaths are complete, Peggy will show you the easy ways that they can be used to border words or other illustrations, or stand on their own as beautiful works of art.

Illustrating succulents. Peggy explains how she approaches succulent illustrations, and demonstrates how she draws different types of cacti in simple and appealing ways. In her lesson, she also touches on how to draw a terrarium by bringing together previously-discussed design options to illustrate plants in a jar.

Drawing from real-life inspiration. You’ll learn to pick out distinct lines, creases, and shadows on real flowers and how to translate them into more realistic, intricate botanical line drawings. Peggy will invite you to watch as she closely observes the details of different flowers and leaves – and then explains how she ensures that each plant’s most pertinent characteristics make it to the page.

For the class project, I'd love to see your drawings, of course! But moving it a step further, I encourage you to come up with a line drawing on an object of some kind. For example, the image here features white paper-finish Ikea boxes with a botanical design along the bottom on all sides.

Hey hey! I'm Peggy. I'm native to the Pacific Northwest and I love all things creative. From a young age I was dipping everything I could into the arts. I've dabbled in quite an abundance of varieties, such as ballet, fire dancing, crafting, graphic design, traditional calligraphy, hand lettering, painting with acrylics and watercolors, illustrating, creative writing, jazz, you name it. If it's something involving being artistic, I've probably cycled through it a time or two (or 700).